The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of June 5, 2023

Talatat: Portrait of Nefertiti

c. 1353–1347 BC

Egypt, Karnak, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Amenhotep IV, 1353-1337 BC

Painted sandstone

Overall: 21.5 x 24.3 cm (8 7/16 x 9 9/16 in.)

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1976.4

Location

107 Egyptian

Fun Fact

Even though all we see is a fragment of the head we know it is Nefertiti by the double uraeus or serpent symbol on the headband, which was only worn by the queen.

Description

The son of Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, brought about the short-lived "monotheistic" revolution in Egyptian religion near the end of Dynasty 18. The young king constructed a temple complex to the Aten, the Sun Disk, at Karnak—from which this relief comes—before he moved his capital to El Armana. For reasons yet unknown, the figure of the Queen Nefertiti appears in these reliefs far more often than that of the king. Ironically, the Aten temples were dismantled anciently to be used as foundations and fill for additions to the Great Temple of Amun, whom the Aten had briefly displaced.

Provenance
-1976
Mrs. Paul and Milton Girod Mallon, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art
1976-
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Citations
Chevrier, Henri, "Rapport sur les travaux de Karnak 1953-1954," Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte (ASAE) 53 (1956). pl. XIX
Kozloff, Arielle P. "Nefertiti, Beloved of the Living Disk." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 64, no. 9 (1977). pp. 287-98, fig. 3, cover www.jstor.org
Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1976." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 64, no. 2 (1977). no. 4, p. 43 www.jstor.org
The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 15 archive.org
Johnson, Mark M. "An Introduction to the Art of Egypt," Arts and Activities 83 no. 2 (March 1978). pp. 38-9, fig. 8
Cleveland Museum of Art, and Adele Z. Silver. Guide to the Galleries. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1981. p. 11, fig. 10
Cleveland Museum of Art, and Arielle P. Kozloff. An Introduction to the Art of Egypt in the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar]: [Verlag nicht ermittelbar], 1983. p. 11
Berman, Lawrence M., and Kenneth J. Bohač. Catalogue of Egyptian Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999 Reproduced: p. 244, Color: p. 55; Mentioned: p. 244
Vandenbeusch, Marie, Aude Semat, and Margaret Maitland. Pharaoh: King of Ancient Egypt. 2016. p. 99, fig. 57
Exhibition history

Pharaohs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from the Louvre. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (February 11-April 14, 1996).

Year in Review, 1976. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 1-March 6, 1977).

Exposition Akhénaton. Musée d'art et d'histoire, Genéve 3, Switzerland (organizer) (October 16, 2008-February 1, 2009); Fondazione Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin, Italy (February 26-June 14, 2009).

Pharaoh: King of Ancient Egypt. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 13-June 12, 2016).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1976.4